Founded in 1118ce and destroyed on Friday the 13th 1307, the Knights Templar, or Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon to quote their full title (1), have contributed to modern society the most inauspicious date in the calendar, so that even those who know nothing of them are influenced indirectly by them through superstition. The purpose of forming the Order was to protect pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land from bandits, muggers and Saracens.
Unlike most medieval knights, the Templars took vows of poverty ([supposedly] represented on their seal as two knights sharing one horse), chastity and obedience. They were monks, but they were fearsome warriors as well, and their service won them a glorious reputation as pious Brothers dedicated to the Lord and benevolent to pilgrims. It also won them gifts and donations from wealthy Europeans which other religious orders envied, and it ultimately won them the ultimate gift available to any religious order.
Pope Innocent II granted them total freedom from every authority but his own. They were answerable to no monarch, law, bishop or archbishop, and they could collect tithes but didn’t have to pay any themselves – basically they were above every law and answerable only to the Pope. It was this freedom which also allowed them their own chaplains, churches and cemeteries (2). And it was this that contributed to their aura of secrecy and enabled them to do whatever they liked behind closed doors.
There are some curiosities about their foundation. When they arrived in Jerusalem in 1119, which at that time was a Christian Kingdom after a successful Crusade, they asked King Baldwin if they could have their headquarters on the Temple Mount (the site of the original Temple of Solomon).
The King consented and gave them part of the Al-Asqa Mosque adjacent to the Dome of the Rock, despite the fact that his palace was also there. What is most unusual about this is that at this point there were only nine knights, and they remained only nine in number for the first nine years of their existence(3), and there is no evidence that they protected pilgrims during this period(4).
The most striking point about this to my mind is that while these nine French blokes were claiming to protect pilgrims and actually doing very little (apparently) for the first nine years of their order’s existence, the Knights Hospitaller were actually doing this job and providing food and accommodation for these pilgrims to a high standard.
They never received the same freedoms from the Pope as the Templars, but eventually created their own freedom when they managed to acquire Malta for their own personal use (incidentally, this order was the source of what is now the St John’s ambulance brigade). It seems strange that this anomaly was not recorded at the time and that all the Templars’ benefactors were so easily duped. (…. or were they?)
After the Templars were recognized by the Pope there was a rapid increase in the amount of donations they received. This often included land, which was then turned to profit. When new members were recruited into the order they turned all of their possessions over to the Temple, and because many knights were nobles many estates were acquired for the order throughout Europe. Where they had territory they often set up a preceptory where the Templars lived out their monastic rule, and they sometimes set up a larger church too (instead of the usual small chapel attached to a preceptory).
Temple Church in London is the most famous English Templar church, but they had a church at Garway in Herefordshire and also one in Hereford itself (5) to name the only two known Templar churches in Hereford and Worcester. The outstanding feature of Templar and also Hospitaller churches is their round nave (the nave is the bit people normally sit in to listen to services). This was done to imitate the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem which was a symbol of the Holly Land and where the Templars had their headquarters. A round nave has interesting implications.
An ordinary rectangular nave focuses attention on the activities of the priest at the altar or pulpit. If the Templars sat, or stood, in a circle the nature of the service would have “felt” more equal and possibly would have been more in keeping with “Brotherhood” than being lectured at by an elevated preacher. If their activities were a occult as has been suggested then a round nave would have been appropriate in other ways too.
Their property outside of the Holy Land was used for money-making, sending disabled or injured knights to rest, recruiting, training and doing the religious business that has proven so mysterious. All of this was geared towards maintaining a military presence in the Holy Land which included building huge castles and doing battle with Saracens (and occasionally other Crusaders).
Donations were received at these places too and often the Templars acted as feudal Lords over large estates which needed to be managed as businesses. It is worth noting that the first windmill ever recorded in England was on a Templar property; it is thought they brought the idea over from the Middle East (see Temple Balsall by Eileen Gooder).
The wealth and power of the Templars was massive. The scale of their buildings in the Holy Land was equally massive. Chastel Pelerin (Castle Pilgrim) had an outer wall 6 meters wide and 16 meters high, and two of its towers were more than 34 meters high. Add to this that it was built on a spit of land in the sea and that it had its own harbor and an impressive picture emerges.
This castle was the Templars’ most important base in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (6) and was the point from which the last Crusaders left on 14th August 1291 when they were ousted by Muslim forces.(7)
The Fall of the Templars
After the Holy Land was lost and it became clear that it would not be regained, the real power of the Templars became evident because it was not being focused abroad. The owned almost as much land in France as the king did, which rather annoyed him. In England, King John (buried in Worcester, where I live) pawned the crown jewels to them for six years because he was broke.(8)
This type of financial power, coupled with a highly disciplined and effective army of warrior-monks on an international level, caused some tinges of jealousy, greed and fear in certain European nobles. Notably King Philip IV of France. (9)
This king has the added feeling of humiliation after being rejected when he asked to join the order. He eventually managed to engineer a candidate of his choosing to the position of Pope (Clement V) who then owed the king a favor. Philip plotted the mass arrest of the Templars and tried to get the Pope to add his weight to the proceedings – he was very reluctant but Philip began a public character assassination campaign against him until he crumbled into submission and supported the dissolution of the Templars.
On Friday 13th, at dawn, all Templars in France were seized and arrested. Envelopes containing orders were opened simultaneously by French Sheriffs which gave them the element of surprise in the endeavour. (10) The property of the Templars was mostly turned over to the Hospitallers but the great “Treasure of the Templars” managed to evade the dawn strike. It is now known how their rumored secret source of wealth disappeared and, equally mysteriously, the entire naval fleet of the Templars (which was considerable) disappeared. (11)
The trial, though highly corrupt, revealed the truth behind some of the rumors of heresy in the order which Philip had used to legitimize this attack. In France the Templars were promised leniency if they confessed to charges of heresy, sodomy and obscenity, and promised death if they refused.
The full trial did not begin there until April 1310,
“and by May 54 men had refused to withdraw their repudiation if initial confessions and were handed over to the secular authorities to be burned at the stake.”(12)
Templars travelled far and wide over their territories and it is reasonable to assume that many French Templars were abroad at the time of the arrests. Nowhere were they so harshly treated as in France. In Scotland and particularly in Portugal there was no serious effort to suppress the order.
In Portugal they became the Knights of Christ and in Scotland they are thought to have fought at the Battle of Bannockburn and to have been the source of certain Masonic traditions.(13) Anyway …. in October 1307 King Philip of France send a letter to Edward II in England (who had only been king for a couple of months and who was Philip’s future son-in-law) asking him to arrest the Templars in the same way as he had done.
Edward refused. In fact, he sent several letters to other European monarchs asking them to ignore the charges against the Templars, saying that they were inspired by greed and jealousy. Pope Clement V ended up having to tell Edward to begin proceedings against the order. On 20th December Edward wrote a letter to all his Sheriffs, as the French king had dome, and on 9th, 10th and 11th January 1308, the English Templars were placed in safe custody.(14)
On their arrest an inventory of their property was done. In England this showed that many once prosperous Templar manors and preceptories had fallen into serious disrepair. In some instances this could be attributed to the Templars doing a runner. It was several months after the arrests in France that the English were arrested – plenty of time to arrange a “holiday”. In many cases, however, the property was dilapidated through old age and some people regard this as evidence of the order’s weakness in its latter stages.(15)
The loss of the Holy Land and the realization that another Crusade was not likely would have depleted morale somewhat, and it is not exactly fuel to the fire of enthusiasm in a new recruit. They weren’t attracting as many new members and they had nothing to work for because their military activities were over (other than their “securicor” activities as pawnbrokers and bankers).
The final battles in the Holy Land left many disabled and injured knights as well as all those who died, so all of this is bound to have placed an enormous strain on the order and helps explain the state of decay on some of their properties.
The Charges and the Trials
On Tuesday, 21 October 1309 the trial began in England. It was held in London with the Bishop of London, two Papal Inquisitors (probably Dominicans of the “inquisition” fame), the Pope’s Chaplain and three public notaries.(16)
Internationally there were many different confessions, but here are the principal heresies quoted from John J Robinson’s book:
The confessions stated that in their initiations they had been required to bestow the Osculum Infame, or “kiss of shame”, on the prior, on his mouth .. or on his navel .. or below his spine. They had been required to spit on the cross. Denying Christ, the Templars had worshipped a head, or a head with three faces, or a head with four feet, or a head with just two feet. It was a metal head, or a wooden head, or a human skull set in a reliquary. (A couple of Templars confessed that the head was named Baphomet).
Some confessed that they had also worshipped an idol in the form of a cat, which was red, or grey, or black, or mottled. Sometimes the idol worship required kissing the cat below the tail. Sometimes the cat was greased with the fat from roasted babies.
The Templars were forced to eat food which contained the ashes of dead Templars, a form of witchcraft that passed on the courage of the fallen knights. Some said they had to wear a cord next to their skin after the cord had touched the idol.” (17)
At the Paris Temple,
“a silver head was found with small bones inside, which appeared to have been made to house holy relics”.(18)
This is one of the few pieces of material evidence to support the Templar association with heads. In England a Templar named Henry de la Wolde confessed to kissing on the mouth at initiations, but to no other parts of the body. And preceptor Simon Streche said that he thought receptions everywhere were the same as in the “chief convent”, meaning the Paris Temple where a head was found.
A knight named Robert de Hamilton, when asked about the use of idols attached to the girdles that the Templars wore over their vests, said that the use of the girdle was honorable and called it the Girdle of Nazareth, and said,
“…. it was touched on a certain column” and that they all carry what girdle they wished.(19)
An interesting piece of evidence against them was a Franciscan who said that,
“… about 20 years ago the Grand Preceptor had some relics that he wanted to show the Brothers at Wetherby. At dead of night there was shouting in the chapel, and the Franciscan got up and looked through the keyhole, and saw a great light. The next day he asked a Brother about the night’s events and the Brother told him to go on his way and never speak of it for fear of his life”.(20)
An interesting quote in Crusader Castles, by Hugh Kennedy, is a report by Imad-al-Din of what he thought of the Templar castle of La Feve after it had been conquered in 1187 by Saladin, the Saracen leader.
He says,
“It was a place where they met and received people, a place where they guarded their horses, a place where the torrents of their men flowed, a meeting place of their brethren, the residence of their devil and the place of their crosses, where their masses assembled and their fire was kindled.” (21)
What are we to make of these?
The reference to idols attached to girdles probably relates to a sacred cord which the Templars are supposed to have kept next to their flesh. This may have been something adopted into the Templars from the [GNOSTIC] Cathars who lived in the Languedoc region of France. (22)
They were “heretics” according to the Pope and the Albigensian Crusade ordered by him and carried out largely by the Teutonic Knights slaughtered most of them. What about Baphomet? The worship of an idol in the shape of a head was one of the most persistent accusations leveled against them. Intelligence gained by royal spies who had infiltrated the order prior to the raids also reported the name Baphomet. (23)
In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, the possible meaning of this name is explored. Early examiners of the issue often thought that Baphomet was a corruption of Muhammad. The authors mentioned above point out that if Baphomet was merely God of Allah, why bother renaming him Baphomet? The name could also be a corruption of abufihamet which means “Father of Understanding” of “Father of Wisdom”.(24)
If this is the case, the Templars had adopted Sufism into their rituals. Montague Summers suggested, that the name was a combination of two Greek words (baphe and metis) and meant ‘absorption into wisdom.’
Hugh Schonfield had a different idea for the origin of the name Baphomet as published in Appendix A – The Essenes and the Templars from the book The Essene Odyssey by himself.
The Essenes, to avoid persecution and because they were a secret sect, employed the uses of ciphers and codes to hide the identities of important names. One such cipher, known to bible scholars and translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the Atbash Cipher. To use the cipher you swap the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet for the last, second for second to last, third for third to last and so on. This means that Aleph=Tau, Bet=Shin, hence the name Atbash.
Essene knowledge got passed on to the Gnostics, and Gnostics then passed it on to the Cathars. The Knights Templar was at one time enrolling many Cathar nobles as new recruits. It is likely that among the knowledge passed to the Templars from the Cathars, would have been the knowledge of the Essene ciphers, including Atbash.
Hugh Schonfield obviously thought so, since he didn’t hesitate in applying the Atbash cipher to what he saw as the “obviously artificial name Baphomet”. So Hugh wrote out the name Baphomet in Hebrew, applied the Cipher and revealed the word Sophia! Baphomet was the Greek goddess of wisdom!
The Inquisition had thought that Baphomet was the bearded male head that the Templars prostrated themselves before and which spoke to them and gave them occult powers. Sophia, however, is obviously female and Hugh was not surprised to note that Inquisition records also show that in Templar hands was,
“a casket surmounted by a great head of gilded silver, most beautiful, and constituting the image of a woman.”
But what of the male head? This was Adam Kadmon, and the head was denominated in Hebrew as Chokmah, i.e. Wisdom.
Even before the discovery of Baphomet’s true name, the feminine side of this deity had begun to manifest. Most modern depictions of Baphomet show him with a goats head, breasts (two, four or even six), wings (angelic or demonic), a phallus (usually a very big one), and hooved legs.
So Baphomet had already emerged as androgynous, even before the discovery of his being the blending of Adam Kadmon (essentially a god, although Jews and derivative monotheists wouldn’t see it that way) and the Goddess Sophia due to an Inquisition error.
The Templar Head Cult
A good explanation for the Templar head worship covers another bunch of heretics from the East. The Johannite or Mandaean heresy denounced Jesus as a false prophet and acknowledged John the Baptist as the true Messiah.
In The Holy Blood … the authors assert that,
“In the course of their activities in the Middle East the Templars undoubtedly established contact with Johannite sects …” (25)
John the Baptist was decapitated – hence the worship of a head. In Turin Shroud – In Whose Image …, where Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince effectively demonstrate that Leonardo da Vinci created the shroud, this link is re-affirmed. The reason the head of the shroud is not quite connected to the unreasonably long body is partly because Leonardo, as Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, wanted to allude to John the Baptist in the image.(26)
The Priory of Sion still exists today and is historically linked to the Templars.(27) The Mandaean heresy connection seems to me to be the most likely explanation of the head worship of the Templars.
One of the orders that absorbed the Templars’ lands was the Knights Hospitallers, or the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. I am mildly surprised that the order’s obvious reverence for St John has not been fully researched in an esoteric light by the very capable authors noted above – especially considering that St John’s right hand is one of the relics owned by the order, preserved in the private chapel of the Winter Palace at St Petersburg in Russia.(28)
An upward pointing right hand is a characteristic of some of Leonardo’s paintings and it is noted in the Turin Shroud – In Whose Image … as one of the clues which he left relating to the John the Baptist connection with the Priory of Sion (and hence Templars(29)), but the order’s ownership of this relic is not mentioned in this otherwise mind-blowing book (I liked it).
Aleister Crowley, the infamous Great Beast, was very into the Templars. He wrote a play about them, (30) he was very familiar with the Templar orders in Freemasonry (as self-styled “Inspector-General” of Masonic rites(31)) and he took the name Baphomet for his position as Grand Master of the Ordo Templi Orientis.(32)
He explored the meaning and numerology of the name and says it could mean “baptism of wisdom” (furthering the John the Baptist links) or that it is a corruption of a title meaning “Father Mithras”. He says that this latter interpretation shows why the Templars gave that name to their idol. “Baphomet was Father Mithras, the cubical stone which was the corner of the Temple.” (relating to the headquarters of the Templars on the site of the original Temple of Solomon).(33)
Other sources connect Baphomet with Cernunnos, the God of the witches, and say that the Templars preserved the deeper aspects of the old ways in their inner rites. Eliphas Levi, who also showed an interest in the Templars, equated Baphomet with the Goat of the Sabbat(34) – incidentally, Crowley believed he was Levi in a former incarnation.
There are many lines of enquiry into Baphomet in the field of Magick – too long-winded to detail here.
The Aftermath
Some final interesting points. When Jacques de Molay (the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar before the trial) and Geoffrey de Charnay (the order’s treasurer) were burnt at the stake, Jacques is reported to have issued a final curse.
“He called his persecutors – Pope Clement and King Philip – to join him and account for themselves before the court of God within the year. Within a month Pope Clement was dead, supposedly from a sudden onslaught of dysentery. By the end of the year Philip was dead as well, from causes which remain obscure to this day.” (39)
As evidence that the Templars remained close to certain French hearts in more recent times (probably through Freemasonry) the scene of the execution of King Louis XVI in 1789 (French Revolution) needs a brief review. After the guillotine had fallen and the king’s head lay in a basket “… an unknown man is reported to have leaped onto the scaffold. He dipped his hand into the monarch’s blood and flung it out over the surrounding throng and cried ‘Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!'” (40)
So many different things have been affected by the Templars – like their travels to America (41) and their quest for the lost Ark of the Covenant. (42) Enquiring minds should consult the list of references for this article and do much further reading.
References
- Hancock, Graham – The Sign and The Seal – a quest for the lost Ark of the Covenant, BCA 1992
- Robinson, John J – Dungeon, Fire and Sword – The Knights Templar in the Crusades, Michael O’Mara Books Ltd, London, 1991
- Robinson, ibid
- Hancock, ibid cit
- ‘St Giles Church and Hospital, Hereford’. Hereford and Worcester Sites and Monuments Record no 4409
- Kennedy, Hugh – Crusader Castles, Cambridge University Press, 1994
- Robinson, op cit
- Elliott, Paul – Warrior Cults – A History of Magical, Mystical and Murderous Organisations, Blandford Books, London, 19959.
- Walker, Charles – Atlas of Secret Europe, Dorset Press, New York, 1990
- Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln – The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, Corgi Books, London, 1982
- Hancock, op cit
- Gooder, Eileen – Temple Balsall – The Warwickshire Preceptory of the Templars and Their Fate, Phillimore and Co Ltd, Chichester, 1995,
- see Hancock and Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh amongst others
- Gooder, op cit,
- Gooder, op cit
- Gooder, op cit
- Robinson, op cit
- Robinson, ibid
- Robinson, op cit
- Gooder, ibid
- Kennedy, op cit
- Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, op cit
- Elliott, op cit
- Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, op cit
- Baignet, Leigh and Lincoln, ibid. Quoted in Turin Shroud – In Whose Image – The Shocking Truth Unveiled, by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, 1994
- Pickentt, Lynn and Prince, Clive, Turin Shroud – In Whose Image …. BCA 1994
- see Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln for more on the Priory
- Fincham, H W – The Order of the Hospital of St John and its Grand Priory of England, London, second edition 1993
- Picknett and Prince, op cit
- Crowley, Aleister – The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Arkana Books (Penguin), London, 1989 (first published 1979)
- Crowley – ibid
- Crowley – ibid
- Crowley – ibid. See also Crowley’s Magical Record of the Beast 666 1972
- Levi, Eliphas, Transcendental Magic, Rider Books, London 1984 (first published 1896)
- Hancock, op cit
- Nicholson, Helen – Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights – Images of the Military Orders 1128 – 1291, Leicester University Press, 1995
- Walker, op cit
- Jones, Alison – (The Wordsworth) Dictionary of Saints, Ware, Herts, 1992
- Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, op cit
- Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, ibid
- Sinclair, Andrew – The Sword and The Grail
- Hancock, op cit
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